


At the Worst Possible Moment

by Nevcolleil



Series: Moments Like These [3]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 02:43:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14946098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: Rames has creeped Jack out from the beginning - Mac’s noticed. Maybe because Rames, perhaps pegging Mac as the weakest link in the team - obviously being the youngest and the least armed - has put so much of his effort into trying to intimidate Mac from the beginning.





	At the Worst Possible Moment

**Author's Note:**

> There's one last part of this collection left for me to post. I know this has been a darker bit than I've written in a while, in parts 2 and 3, and with shorter sections - thank you for sticking with me :p
> 
> The next part is actually more of a bonus, because instead of a bad guy going after Mac + protective Jack, the tables are turned. 
> 
> OP, I hope some part of these captured what you were looking for with your prompt!! I tried slowing things down with a couple of them, laying on the insinuation heavier, but I don't think I write subtle creepy so well - my bad guys kind of go hard and fast!
> 
> For anyone concerned with the Non-con tag on this, read the end notes for more info.

Mac’s not being naive when he ensures the tac team that he can watch their captive.

He’s seen a lot of things over the course of his career. Maybe it hasn’t been as _long_ of a career as some, since he’s still not quite thirty, but it’s been long enough that he’s faced off with the likes of creeps like Vincent Rames - a big, burly, brutal-looking skinhead, with fists that look like split kneecaps, and a torso about the size of the average refrigerator.

Rames isn’t the cleverest of criminals, is the thing. His huge arms are zip-tied up behind his back, his wrists and ankles are zip-tied to boot, and Mac won’t have to watch over him for long.

All he has to do is ensure that Rames doesn’t slip away while the tac team - who’ve left Rames here with Mac, bound - provide emergency back up to the agents chasing down Rames’s accomplices.

It’s an acceptable risk.

It’s hardly a risk at all, compared to some of the stuff Mac’s done on a mission.

“The hell it’s _not_!” Jack shouts over the comm, all the same. He really is expressing a disproportionate amount of alarm, Mac thinks. “You clear out of there. We’ll catch Rames again if we have to. But you are _not_ , you hear me - _not_ gonna spend one more moment alone with that meathead!”

But then, Rames has creeped Jack out from the beginning - Mac’s noticed. Maybe because Rames, perhaps pegging Mac as the weakest link in the team - obviously being the youngest and the least armed - has put so much of his effort into trying to intimidate Mac from the beginning.

Mac and Jack were the ones to catch Rames the first time. Jack, Rames barely paid any attention, other than as an obstacle to his escape. But Mac? Rames took one look at him - with Jack kneeling on his back, a gun to the back of his bald head - and laughed so deep and so loud that he almost shook Jack off of his perch atop the man’s massive shoulderblades.

' _You_ ,’ he laughed while Mac tried not to look quite as shamefaced as he couldn’t help feeling. It’s hardly a commentary on Mac’s effectiveness as an agent that Rames is just too stupid not to have disqualified Mac as a threat, for whatever reasons. 'Tough guy brought _you_ with him to bring me in? Oh... Oh, please. _Please_ , Mr. Tough Guy... Leave me with the prettyboy for just five minutes. I promise to be _real_ nice to him.’

Mac’s rarely seen Jack get so angry so quickly. 

“Shut your fucking mouth, Rames!” Jack all but barked at the guy, pressing the butt of his gun into the back of Rames’s head hard enough to leave a bruise after. “Or I swear to god, I will put a back door on it!”

The whole ride back to HQ, Rames stared at Mac and Mac alone, with an unflinching stare and a creepy smile on his lips. Jack spent the whole trip red-faced and fuming.

Rames is staring and smiling in much the same way at Mac now, but Mac thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of meeting his unsettling gaze with a guarded gaze of his own. 

He’s not going to be intimidated by an idiot with a mean spirit just because he happens to have been compensated in bulk for all of the other things that he seems to have been born lacking.

At least... Mac isn’t going to _telegraph_ as much, any more than he can help it.

“Matty said another team should be here in like twenty minutes,” Mac says as confidently as he can, over his phone to Jack as the staring contest continues. It’s sort of an effort when Rames’s smile grows into an unhinged looking grin, but Mac’s voice doesn’t waver. “We can’t risk letting him get away again.”

Rames and his buddies have to go back to prison. It was Phoenix tac that lost Rames during his transport back _out_ of HQ, and they can’t let a mistake like that stand.

“Yeah... you tell ‘em, Pretty,” Rames rumbles at Mac, in his deep, gritty voice. “You’ll be just fine in my hands, won’t you?”

“Your hands are zip-tied, Rames,” Mac reminds the criminal coolly. “Remember that and don’t do anything stupid, alright?”

For some reason, that makes Rames laugh just as loud as he laughed a few days before.

“ _Please_ , Mac,” Jack basically pleads with Mac through the phone. “Baby, I’m still a couple blocks away. Just- Just take my word that you don’t wanna give that guy a single, _solitary_ opportunity to catch you off your guard, and just back on out of that room real careful like-”

Jack is _so_ alarmed, actually, that he’s creeping Mac out almost more than Rames’s crazy, half-lidded stare and bared teeth could hope to. Jack never forgets himself when they’re on the job. If not ‘Mac’ or ‘Angus’, he always calls Mac ‘dude’ or ‘brother’ or ‘hoss’ or something. ‘Baby’ belongs strictly to the set of names he and Jack only ever call each other at home.

“Jack, he’s not an _animal_ ,” Mac says. “He’s going to sit, tied up, right there, and I’m going to stand here until you or tac can-”

Rames suddenly twists his head, forcefully, to the side - and it’s just a _split second_ that Mac’s head turns to track the blood Rames spits from his mouth as he does, against the wall nearby-

Mac takes just two steps forward, on reflex. What is Rames _doing_? Hurting himself won’t-

It’s enough to shift Mac’s balance so that, when Rames launches himself at Mac - much faster than a man of his size ought to be able to move - Mac goes down hard with Rames’s body on top of his, winded into stillness.

Mac hears Jack’s stricken shout of his name before his phone clatters to the side, and then the illusion of not having been completely alone here with Rames is gone. The man’s considerable weight pins Mac as soundly to the concrete floor as a toppled building might.

“I don’t need twenty minutes, sweet thing,” Rames grunts, directly against Mac’s ear, the feel of his breath on Mac’s face making Mac’s skin crawl.

It also makes Mac’s heart stop. Because all at once Mac realizes what Rames doesn’t need twenty minutes _for_. What all the staring, the nicknames, the grinning had been about...

Against Mac’s thigh, Rames is hard - Mac feels that clearly as Rames purposefully, and harshly, grinds himself against Mac, sharp and dirty and fast.

Vertigo hits Mac all at once. Between it, fear, and the pressure Rames is putting on Mac’s chest, Mac’s continued breathlessness from his impact with the floor, dark spots threaten to encroach at the edge of Mac’s vision. Everything feels and looks, momentarily, fuzz-

“N-No...” bursts out of Mac on a gasp, and he bucks beneath Rames, causing the larger man to shift just sideways - just enough - to move his legs into a position where he can knee the sonofabitch if he tries that again.

Mac can’t pass out now. He can’t pass out now... Rames may not have use of his hands, but one duck of his head and he could get at Mac’s neck with his _teeth_. He’s holding his elbows akimbo, and there are scrapes along the sides of his forearm, just under the hems of his short shirtsleeves - meaning that he used the violence of his lunge at Mac to snap one set of his bonds already.

If he snaps the other... and Mac is unconscious, helpless-

“ _Rames_ ,” Mac barks at his attacker, trying to talk some sense into him. “My backup’s already on it’s way, they’ll only add years on your-”

Rames laughs, and that laugh is especially terrifying this close up, so close Mac can feel it rumble out of Rames’s chest.

“Years on my life sentence, baby, don’t mean much to me. But taking some sweet memories with me back into lock-up... Oh, yeah. That’d be worth it, even if it did.”

And then he’s squirming on top of Mac - not just to grind against him, although he’s doing plenty of that, but also to draw his elbows up and in, and then sharply separate them again. Trying to break free of those last zip ties.

‘ _Please, God..._ ,’ Mac can only think. He can’t shift Rames’s body far enough off of him again - he’s pinned too completely under the man, and with the vicious way Rames is grunting and jerking his own arms in their bonds, it’s sure to be only moments before- 

‘ _Please, Jack_...’ Mac thinks as well.

The more he struggles under Rames to get away, and the more he fails, the more those dark spots slip into Mac’s vision.

But at least Mac’s arms aren’t pinned as tightly as the rest of him. Mac squirms and writhes, and tries to ignore Rames’s vile grin, blood - from when Rames bit the inside of his cheek or his tongue, apparently, to create his diversion - dripping down his chin and falling onto Mac. 

Rames groans obscenely. “Yeah, Pretty... Help me out. I like it rough, too. Wait til I get my hands loose and I’m gonna _show_ you...”

Mac finally tugs both his arms free from the hunch of Rames’s shoulders and the bulk he’s using to cover Mac.

There are advantageous - and disadvantageous - consequences of this.

Having his hands free means Mac can try and actually defend himself against Rames. Even if he’s in no position to pull back an effective punch, he can get his hands around Rames’s throat, or get at Rames’s eyes.

Having his hands free also means that Mac’s made himself more of an obstacle to Rames’s getting what he wants.

Rames gets his knees on the floor to either side of Mac’s legs just as Mac gets his hands and arms up above Rames’s shoulders. He rocks back on them - and then flops forward on top of Mac, like a beached whale, trying to swim through sand. 

Mac has a second to guess Rames’s purpose, and he wraps his arms around his head so that Rames can’t use his own skull as a blunt object and bash him fully unconscious.

Even as the second impact of Rames’s body into his causes Mac to grunt and want to double up against the pain, Mac angles his elbows so that when Rames’s head does come down towards his, Rames gets a faceful of their hard edges for his trouble. 

Rames hollers loud enough to make Mac’s ears rings... So loud that Mac barely hears the crunch as Rames’s nose cracks. He only knows it has because he feels the warm gush of Rames’s blood soak immediately into his shirt sleeves, dribble onto his face and neck.

Had Mac told Jack that Rames _isn’t_ an animal, what feels like ages ago? The man’s voice is barely human as he curses Mac.

“ _You little shit_!” he bellows. “ _I’m gonna fucking rip you apart_!”

In his rage, he finally snaps through the last of the zip ties.

Mac’s eyes go wide as Rames pushes himself up to straddle Mac, and he tries to block with his hands as Rames lifts one giant fist, but Rames bats Mac’s hands aside as though they’re nothing with the other. 

“J-Jack!” Mac doesn’t think, just screams. “Jack!”

Rames opens his palm right before it makes contact with Mac’s face sharply, snapping it to the side, instead of punching Mac out. 

“Scream if you want, bitch,” Rames growls. “By the time your buddies get here, you’re gonna wish you’d let me knock your skinny ass out while I was feeling generous!”

Still, Mac scrabbles at Rames’s hands, where they’re ripping at the button and fly of Mac’s pants, so Rames slaps him again - harder.

“ _Jack_...” Mac slurs and spits out the blood that fills his mouth as his bottom lip busts.

And that’s not the only thing that breaks.

As if summoned out of nothing by Mac’s calls, Jack is suddenly standing over them both, and the butt of his gun comes down on the back of Rames’s exposed head in a savage and unflinching swing.

Mac sees the man’s eyes roll back in his head, and he drops - half on top of Mac and half off - and still Jack kicks at Rames’s side and hip, once and then again, with all the force he can put behind the steel-toed tac boots he’s wearing, until no part of Rames is so much as near to touching Mac again.

“Jack...”

All at once, Jack collapses at Mac’s side, half-straddling Mac himself so he can get close enough to inspect his face and head, his neck - eyes still blown terror-wide, and hands visibly shaking.

He comes so near to touching Mac’s skin that Mac can feel the heat of him as Mac lies there, gulping in big gasps of air.

He doesn’t understand why Jack _isn’t_ touching him, actually - is just saying, over and over again, in a panic-high voice, “You’re alright... It’s alright, Mac, just breathe, baby. You’re okay...”

And then he remembers the blood. Jack must not be able to tell where it’s coming from, and Mac must be covered in it.

He laughs out loud, giddy with relief - although the sound probably comes out more as a staggered wheeze.

Mac grabs onto Jack and pulls himself up into a sitting position, despite Jack’s startled exclamation.

He grabs each of Jack’s hands with one of his and presses them to the sides of his bloody face. Despite the mess, Mac knows that that’s what Jack’s hovering hands are itching to do - he just hasn’t figured out yet that he won’t hurt Mac with a touch.

“Not... mine,” Mac says, as the adrenaline at last recedes and he begins to recover his breath.

Jack does a fairly good impression of a balloon that’s just felt the pinprick of a needle. 

“Oh, god... Oh, thank God...” he says, falling back on his haunches. His hands wipe away the blood on Mac’s face as if to prove that it’s true - that Mac’s (mostly) in tact beneath the gory illusion, split lip and bruises notwithstanding. Then Jack wraps Mac up in both arms - one under Mac’s shoulders, one around his neck and up over his head, like he’s trying to envelope Mac as much as hold him - hide every inch of Mac from sight that Jack’s arms can cover.

That abruptly, emotion chokes off the airway that Mac’s just felt relax, and he’s shaking in Jack’s arms violently enough for his own teeth to chatter.

Jack talks him down, never relaxing his embrace, even as he somehow fumbles up a hand and his cell phone to call Matty and report their status.

That tac team is still ten minutes away.

There’s no use in Mac even thinking about what could have happened to him in another ten plus minutes. It _didn’t_ , because he had Jack. He has Jack. He knows that, later, Jack is going to want to talk about the choices that led Mac’s condition to depend so heavily upon that fact - and that some of the things Jack’s going to say, Mac will even agree with. 

But for now - until he feels less like he’s going to shake apart at any moment - all Mac _lets_ himself think about is Jack.

Jack, who slowly calms well enough to start checking Mac over for real, for injuries Mac might not have noticed getting in the moment. Only to raise Mac’s shirt to look over his torso and find the ripped closure to his pants, the busted fly.

Mac catches him by the shoulders when Jack jerks in Rames’s direction, ready to lunge for the unconscious man.

“Jack, _no_!”

“Mac! That piece of shit was gonna-”

“I know! Jack,” Mac says shakily. He’d figured that out eventually. “He didn’t get the chance, thanks to you.”

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

Mac appreciates the sentiment - of course he does. He probably appreciates it more than he should, actually - knowing as he does that Jack doesn’t always exaggerate when he says things like that. This soon after having had to fight a man off of Mac - after finding Mac covered in blood and struggling to breathe... Jack could kill Vincent Rames in his sleep - snap his neck - without giving so much as a thought to the consequences. 

“He’s unconscious, Jack.”

Jack’s lips curve at both ends, although he’s not actually smiling. “Oh, I wasn’t plannin’ on disturbing his rest first.”

“In no way is he worth it,” Mac says steadily. And Mac will _not_ see Jack suffer, later, because of something he did on account of all this.

“ _You’re_ worth it,” Jack argues, but Mac’s protests have done their job. When Mac feels the tension in Jack’s shoulders relax, he relaxes, and when he lets himself slump into Jack a little, Jack presses their foreheads together and holds him close once more.

“I heard him-” Jack says quietly, just between them. “I heard him shouting from down the stairs... Saying he was gonna- Then you started screamin’...” 

And Mac’s not the only one who’s come close today to shaking apart. Faint tremors still rack Jack’s body, and Mac returns his embrace - tries to soothe away the shudders with his own hands.

“Mac... Mac, I can’t have that. I can’t go through that ever again...” Jack almost whispers - like he’s afraid to even put the thought out into the world. “I can’t lose you, baby... Not like that. Not ever, but especially not like that, Mac. Please...”

Not to someone brutal and cruel, but for all of that, so much _less_ than Mac has fought, and won against, time and time before. Just because the bad guy got lucky. Just because _Mac_ had too quickly disqualified him as a threat. 

It’s Jack’s job to identify the threats Mac’s too busy, too distracted - or, yes, occasionally, too naive - to identify.

Mac can’t - neither of them can - promise that the bad guy won’t get the drop on one or both of them again. But Mac can promise Jack this - that he’ll take Jack more seriously the next time they argue over what Jack needs to do his job.

“You won’t... Jack, you won’t,” Mac promises them both.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning/Spoilers: A bad guy in Mac's custody jumps him. There is rubbing and vague talk of what he wants to do to Mac as well as some actual fighting. The bad guy rips Mac's clothing in an attempt to get into his pants, but doesn't actually get Mac out of his clothing or touch him much of anywhere with his hands.


End file.
